We’ve recently put together a quick 13 question “Warehouse Audit” to provide a quick way to score your operation to see how well you are doing relative to other operations like yours or in other industries with similar processes. This initial audit focuses on aspects of your Shipping and Receiving dock. Future additions will cover areas like Returns, Replenishment, Picking and more.
But before you jump in, just HOW do you conduct a warehouse audit? While a short list of questions may seem like an easy thing to attack between bites of a sandwich during a break, the truth is that many of the questions require some minimal level of awareness of the basic processes and the data that defines how you measure them. If you are NOT one of those Six Sigma Black Belt, sensor-covered, data-warehouse at your fingertips kind of operation, then here are a few core things to get under your belt to get yourself and your team better prepared not just to do a one-time audit, but to better incorporate an efficiency mindset into the everyday workflow.
Three Core Habits That Infuse Efficiency Into Your Warehouse
1. Know Your “Process”
Remember, just because no one has ever documented your processes doesn’t mean you don’t have processes! Start with the big picture – the major steps and milestones before getting into the nitty gritty. For example, in Receiving, things like “unload the truck/container”, “Scan-in/Label incoming pallets and cartons” and “Putaway incoming product”. Have you monitored or walked through the Receiving process? Better yet, have you done a short shift or two in Receiving yourself that would not only give you a better appreciation of what’s involved, but also the perspective of an outsider who might spot areas to improve that others may have missed? While you are there, be like the “Undercover Boss” and ‘Ask all the dumb questions’. You’d be surprised how often a team will continue doing something they were trained to do when they started without ever questioning the “Why?” so being the “dumb” one often leads to many “Aha!” moments that let them contribute to improvements.
2. Count What Matters Most
One way that even some of the most experienced and biggest companies get bogged down in the area of measurement is a culture of wanting to measure everything. The problem is that even if you can measure 100 things there are usually just five or six key things that will matter more than all the rest. Start with these “lynchpin” metrics – which should be things you can affect directly and on which other metrics are linked to. One additional filter is to start on the things that you already know are problems.
For example, if you have trucks waiting to unload so long you are experiencing detention fees, there are a number of things going on INSIDE the dock that need to be fixed to address that, so it’s a metric that is going to get attention, but not something you can affect directly without solving other problems first. Would another forklift solve the problem by clearing the dock faster? Or is the one driver sitting and waiting for dock staff to finish scanning and labeling? Spending a short shift working the dock might tell you where to start.
3. Recognize It Will ALWAYS be “Continuous Improvement”
Even if you are not formally practicing “Kaizen”, you’ll need to remember that “problems” you find in your processes are never actually “solved”. It’s better to think of things more holistically that feels more like “the process needs improvement”. Today’s improvement may seem inadequate in six months or a year. And as other processes evolve, patterns change with seasons or product sales, and new equipment or software gets introduced to the facility (or perhaps upstream or downstream from the process somewhere else!), you spot the next level of “improvements” needed.
Take the Test, Get Your Score, And Get to Work
Whether or not you are part of a world-class space-age hi-tech operation with a Six Sigma Black Belt in every conference room or have just recently discovered bar codes and have your team fighting over who gets to ride the forklift, you will be able to complete the audit in 90 seconds using what you already know and get your own warehouse audit report. But once you do, use the download on the same page to get a detailed explanation of what each question refers to and how to acquire the data you may be seeking to track your progress and do the audit again in the future to see your progress.
